Monday, September 8, 2014

“India
should see the warning signals from China’s growth models. China’s top
down, non-inclusive policy-making has kept social and environmental concerns
out of its economic growth plan at great cost to its people and the quality of
their life.”

We have looked to China these past several years
partly as competitor, part in fear and often as an economic growth role model.
The new Prime Minister is thought to have a good relationship with the leaders
in China
and the government is likely to build on that.

One of the first people to congratulate Narendra
Modi and his government was Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and exchanges with
Chinese leaders continue at a high level. The latest has been the very cordial
meeting between Mr Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Brics Summit in
Brazil.

There is much to emulate from China,
starting with its discipline. The Chinese have invested heavily in basic
education, health, agriculture and rural employment. They have become
manufacturing giants and developed markets for their products. One of their
interesting models is the chain of township and village enterprises which links
rural produce to urban markets. China
is also known for its firm policy-making aimed almost entirely at maintaining
high growth figures. It is precisely this aspect that we need to observe with
caution.

The new government is trying to move fast to make up for the years of policy
paralysis of the last government, but it must hurry slowly. One single
statement that projects worth `80,000 crore, which were held up by the
environment ministry, will be cleared immediately has been sufficient to set
off the disquiet. It is certain that many projects were held up because of
bureaucratic red tape, but surely there were others that were held up because
of serious enough shortcomings to warrant a review and even denial of
permission.

Unbridled economic growth can extract a high price as we have seen in many
countries including our own. In case of China, some of the consequences
have been severe, especially in the field of agriculture and food production.
According to Chinese reports, the country is battling with an unprecedented
contamination of its agricultural land, a phenomenon that is assuming alarming
proportions. The situation is so serious that large tracts of arable land have
become unfit for food cultivation. Not just food, altogether 3.5 million
hectares are thought to be so polluted now that they cannot support any kind of
agriculture at all. Chinese scientists hold the excessive use of chemical
fertilisers and indiscriminate dumping of industrial waste to be responsible
for the poisoning of the land.

A study conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to
evaluate the future of China’s food production potential came up with shocking
findings. The study found that 40 per cent of China’s land is degraded and 20 per
cent is so fouled up by industrial effluents, farm chemicals, sewage and waste
water run-off from mining sites, as to have become almost unusable. The water
resources are equally contaminated because a lot of water is being diverted to
coal mining areas and the water that flows out from there is a toxic mix of chemicals.
Contamination of the soil and water with toxic heavy metals like cadmium,
nickel and arsenic is growing and is particularly high in the south-west
region, which is China’s
rice belt. The situation is so bad that large tracts of land are being abandoned
by farmers who are afraid to eat the produce cultivated on such land.

The soil and water toxicity is impacting the food chain and contaminating the
food. Rice samples taken from shops and restaurants traced the contaminated
rice to the Hunan province, one of China’s most
important rice growing regions. Contamination of food in the Hunan region should come as no surprise,
given the fact that several industries in this area have come up in the
vicinity of agricultural land and the heavily contaminated factory effluent
flows straight into the rice fields. There are reports that high incidence of
cancer is found in the regions near the polluting factories. This should remind
us of our own “cancer train” running from Punjab
to hospitals in Rajasthan. These trains carry cancer patients, mostly from
farming areas which have been using deadly cocktails of chemical pesticides and
excessive doses of chemical fertilisers. We should know we cannot allow this
terrible situation to get any worse.

All this contamination of arable land and its becoming unfit for food
production has high level policy implications. The situation is considered so
grave by Chinese analysts that they fear for the country’s food security and
food sovereignty. There is a real fear in policy circles that China may not
be able to produce sufficient safe food to feed itself. Already affluent
families that can afford to, are relying on imported foods and bottled water to
feed their families. According to some reports, there is hoarding of food and
water and a climate of fear about being able to eat safe food and drink clean
water.
India
should see the warning signals from such growth models and draw lessons from
it. China’s
top down, non-inclusive policy-making has kept social and environmental concerns
out of its economic growth plan at great cost to its people and the quality of
their life. The country already faces a challenge to its food security and the
health of the environment has become a serious cause for concern. We must be
cautioned by the China
experience and do things differently. Yes, there must be firmness in
policy-making and there must be timely and determined action. But the social
and environmental aspects must be part of economic decision-making. The
cost-benefit analysis of every project must be honest and transparent and
inform the ultimate decision. Squandering our social capital for economic gains
will be short sighted if not outright self-destructive.

The writer is a scientist and chairperson of
Gene Campaign. She can be reached at mail@genecampaign.org

About Me

Dr. Suman Sahai, who has had a distinguished scientific career in the field of genetics, is a recipient of the Padma Shri,the Borlaug Award, Outstanding Woman Achiever awards, the BirbalSahni Gold Medal and the Order of the Golden Ark .
Dr. Sahai is founder Chairperson of the Gene Campaign which is a leading research and advocacy organization, working on issues relating to food, nutrition and livelihoods. She has published extensively on science and policy issues and is a member of several national policy forums on scientific research and education, biodiversity and environment, biotechnology and bioethics as well as intellectual property rights.
Dr Sahai chaired India’s Planning Commission Task Force on ‘Agro biodiversity and Genetically Engineered Organisms’, for the XIth Plan. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the National Biodiversity Board , the Expert Committee on Biotechnology Policy and the Bioethics Committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research.She has served on the Research Advisory Committees of national scientific institutions.
Dr Sahai can be reached at www.genecampaign.org and mail@genecampaign.org